With Moot, we can trace a similar psychological benefit pattern for many of our customers who write to us and tell us about how they found us and what becoming a Moot wearer has given to them. Like cold open water swimming, it is hard to get in. It takes a bit of bravery. It is not easy to turn away from the comfort of a 'vanilla' unquestioning existence, where you are never going to raise an eyebrow of judgement. It requires a bit of steel.
This blog is not intended as a information piece, rather more a little flag of our feelings and intentions waving from over here at Moot HQ and an invitation for any of our friends in the LGBTQ+ community (if they have any energy left) to keep pointing us in the right direction to make sure that we are good and proper allies.
We do want to talk about the dichotomy of the view of lingerie for women and for men. In setting up Moot, what we wanted to do was to create a range of luxurious undergarments that sat in parallel with the offering for women’s bodies, but ones that were designed to fit a male form.
Moot is gender non-conforming because we wholly reject the idea that any assigned or accepted gender should prevent a human from having the freedom to choose the fabric and style that they wish to wear. We will not conform with a ‘rule’ that we must wear boxers or briefs, and they must be cotton and 'manly' and have big elastic logos with SPORTS words and they must be in neutral colours only. Blurgh. We will not conform.
We wanted to ask Ray at what point he acknowledged a desire to wear something that as a man, he wasn’t ‘supposed’ to wear, and how did he feel in himself?, firstly acknowledging it and later, acting upon it. We wanted to hear about his internal feelings, not how other people reacted, but what the impact was like for him. And why despite people calling it cross-dressing, we don't think it's cross-dressing at all! It's simply dressing. Damn fine dressing.